Women detainees and ex-detainees have been coming forward to speak out about the abuse they suffered and witnessed, and to demand redress. The racist and sexist regime, of legal, psychological and physical abuse which women frequently describe as mental torture at Yarl’s Wood, has been covered up for far too long.

The women imprisoned in Yarl’s Wood are systematically set up for abuse by the fact that they are treated as liars, who must prove themselves truthful whilst being detained indefinitely.

By law the ‘burden of proof’ in the asylum & immigration system means they are guilty until proven innocent. The women in Yarl’s Wood have between them successfully escaped every kind of abuse and violence that women commonly face around the world – rape, sexual abuse, forced marriage, Female Genital Mutilation, trafficking, domestic violence, child abuse, anti-gay persecution.